Frivolous fantasy: How Oasis sank a Rolls-Royce | Classic Driver Magazine Frivolous fantasy: How Oasis sank a Rolls-Royce 04 July 2013 Library In 1997, the Oasis album ‘Be Here Now’ became the fastest-selling album in British history. On the cover was a Rolls-Royce submerged in a swimming pool in true rock ‘n’ roll fashion, but What’s The Story behind it? Classic Driver asked the photographer who captured the well-known image... You might think plunging a car into a swimming pool would be simple enough for a rock ‘n’ roll band, especially given the devil-may-care nature of many heroes of the music business. With the intention of paying homage to Keith Moon’s much-rumoured ‘carpooling’ antics, the crew needed to find an appropriate venue. Stocks House in Hertfordshire, UK, was deemed the most appropriate by famous rock photographer Michael Spencer Jones: “It had a swimming pool directly in front of the house, and from a photographic point of view was ideal”.

Perhaps just as importantly, it also had the required history: "In the 70s it played home to Playboy’s UK arm, regularly holding parties of a ‘hedonistic’ nature. Make of that what you will…" "With the band's arrival imminent, I began to imagine their reaction..." Jones recalls: “The white Rolls-Royce arrived at Stocks the day before the shoot, albeit without an engine”. Although the final cover image embodied the frivolous ‘rock star’ lifestyle, the Rolls had in fact been destined for the scrapheap, before being purchased for £1,000 by the crew. Otherwise in good condition, the Silver Shadow was lowered into the empty swimming pool – the only change being a new numberplate. “It needed to be replaced with a more interesting number” explains Jones, “and it was suggested that it should be replaced with the number plate 28 IF, as seen on the VW car on the cover of The Beatles’ album Abbey Road.

This was too obvious, so I decided it would be better to have the plate from the black police van, which was SYO 724F.” Once the car was lowered into the pool and the scaffolding arranged to support the car at the ideal angle (with the registration number visible just above the water line), the local fire brigade helped to refill the pool. However, “the oil and dirt from the underside of the Rolls had transferred into the swimming pool, creating a scummy mess on the surface,” Jones reminisces. “With the band's arrival imminent, I began to imagine their reaction. Luckily oil and water don’t mix, so with the aid of a rowing paddle, the top layer of oil and scum was carefully removed from the surface.” With everything in place – including the band members and associated props – the scene was set to become one of the most iconic images in musical history. Photos: © Michael Spencer Jones Meet The Man Who Put A Rolls Royce In Oasis' Swimming Pool - Sabotage Times Sabotage Times Life Meet The Man Who Put A Rolls Royce In Oasis' Swimming Pool In a 21 year career Microdot founder Brian Cannon has seen it all.

Here he talks Oasis, miserable bands, Coldplay being shite, creating rock n' roll history and why Noel's solo album will be brilliant... Avatar: Social count: 22 In a 21 year career Microdot founder Brian Cannon has seen it all. Here he talks Oasis, miserable bands, Coldplay being shite, creating rock n' roll history and why Noel's solo album will be brilliant... 22 0 With a back catalogue that stands up to anyone’s in the history of cover art and a roll call of bands including Oasis, the Super Furry Animals, The Verve, Suede and the Ruthless Rap Assassins, Brian Cannon the founder of legendary design label, Microdot Creative , is one of the finest creative minds of the past 20 years. He’s also a fucking riot. Interviews can be a pain in the arse, but when I got the choice to either go to Noel Gallagher’s press conference last Wednesday and listen to entertainment journalists and tabloid hacks ask the same old questions, or interview Brian on the blower from Wigan, there was only one choice.

As a 16-year old kid in a shitty Shropshire town, Definitely Maybe kicked the stuffing out of me musically, it ended the dirge of grunge, sent lads everywhere to hairdressers and sports shops and spawned a thousand piss-poor bands under the Britpop moniker, so the chance to interview the bloke who conceptualised the iconic cover was not one to be missed. Microdot, named after the lighter-flint looking version of LSD that some idiots used to put under their eyelids, is 21 this year and I talked to Brian fresh off a trip to Cardiff to work with various members of the Super Furry Animals who are doing solo projects. We spoke about his new career as a university lecturer, how he’d love to work with the Arctic Monkeys, how any kid with a mac can now knock out a logo for £75 and why Beyonce was fucking amazing at Glastonbury. That, of course, and the Oasis juggernaut, Coldplay being shite, Noel’s solo projects and how he’s moving with the times… On being inspired by Punk… It was Punk in general but the Sex Pistols particularly.

It’s incredible they only did one album and a few singles but just all that Jamie Reid stuff totally blew me away. I was only 11 when Never Mind The Bollocks came out and it had a huge impact, and later on when I studied art history I realised where he was coming from with all this Dada stuff and what was going on in Germany in the 1920s, the collage type work. So I got really into that and pop art. A lot of my influences come from art rather than album sleeves, but when you say pop art people think Andy Warhol, and I think he was great, but for me it was Robert Rauschenberg; he’s the main man, amazing. I met Richard totally by accident in 1990 at a party when he was 17, and then I bumped into him at a petrol station two years later at 6 O’clock in the morning and he said ‘you’re that guy who does the sleeves, do you wanna do ours?’ Starting Out... I graduated in 1988 and I couldn’t be arsed to get a job.

Actually its not that I wasn’t arsed, that sounds too pig-headed, I just knew I can’t work for anybody else. So I set up to do it on my own and lo and behold I didn’t get and work for about two years but I didn’t have another option. And I really believed in myself, there was this blind self-belief, and I had no idea where it came from and I just refused point blank to give in. It’s funny though because if I didn’t make fuck knows what I would’ve done, I was just convinced that it would happen and it did. Me mother is my biggest supporter and I love her to bits, she’s still with us, she’s 81 now, and even she said “come on now, you’ve got a degree why don’t you get a proper job?” and I snapped, well not that I’d snap at me mum but I said “come on mother, if you don’t believe in me that really is the end” but she stuck with me and the rest is history… Meeting Richard Ashcroft...

I met Richard totally by accident in 1990 at a party when he was 17, and then I bumped into him at a petrol station two years later at 6 O’clock in the morning and he said ‘you’re that guy who does the sleeves, do you wanna do ours?’ and that was it and it just took off from there… Meeting Noel Gallagher... It’s true, I met him because of a pair of trainers. When I graduated in 1988 I moved to London immediately, then I got into house music and was travelling back every Friday afternoon to Manchester to go to the Hacienda. So I thought ‘fuck it,’ if I was there all the time I may as well move there, so I moved back. The scene was just remarkable. So I got an office in an old cotton mill that had been broken up into little business units. Mine was £20 a week and had no windows in it, which is a bit of a drawback if you’re doing visual stuff, but it was cheap as chips. I didn’t have a computer, I had a photocopier and a drawing board and that was it.

And I was doing the early Verve stuff, I’d seen this guy knocking around. You take it for granted now that everyone wears adidas and what have you but back then it was a rarity and mainly ex-football hooligans, or current football hooligans for that matter, I’d been into the football for a while and it was exclusive for that group of people. I became the biggest walking advert for Oasis that you had ever seen, people thought I had gone mad. I was just ranting ‘this band are fucking brilliant they’ll be bigger than Led Zeppelin’ I was in Rome on holiday with me Mum in 1991 or 92 and I bought these Adidas indoor supers. I’d seen this bloke knocking around the building, but you’d walk around and I’d clock him and he’d clock me, both too cool for school to say hello. Anyway one day I was in the lift and he gets in and I had the trainers on, which you couldn’t get in England. First thing he said to me was ‘where the fuck did you get those trainers from?’ And that’s how we got chatting.

He asked me what I did, I told him, he said ‘who’ve you done?’ so I told him I’d done a couple of Verve singles by that point and he said ‘no way, I think they’re really good.’ Then as he got out of the lift he says ‘I’m in a band and when, not if, when we get signed I want you to do the artwork,’ and that were it and he was good to his word. Seeing Oasis live for the first time… The first time I saw Oasis, and I think I’ve seen them play something like 70 times, was at the Hop and Grape bar at Manchester Uni, probably holds about 300 people. Noel had been fucking mithering me to come and watch them but you know what it’s like, we’d become friends by this point and if a mate of yours plays in a band your like ‘they’re bound to be shit aren’t they?’ He was cool but I thought they’d be shit, all bands are shit except for a handful over the past 20 years or whatever, and I was worried about what I’d say if they were shit. But I went along and they were amazing.

I was with Marcus Russell (manager) and Johnny Marr who Marcus had persuaded to come. It was super early on this and there was no looking back after that, I became the biggest walking advert for Oasis that you had ever seen, people thought I had gone mad. I was just ranting ‘this band are fucking brilliant they’ll be bigger than Led Zeppelin,’ and people were like ‘what the fuck are you going on about?’ The live show was like a fucking juggernaut coming into the room it were just ace. Before they showed their arses in public they were rehearsing 7 nights a week they really put a shift in. All of them are really nice blokes, Tony gets a hard time but I got on really well with him, all of the time we used to have a laugh, just constantly laughing. A lot of bands these days, and this really pisses me off, they’ve just been signed and they think the world owes them a living and they just turn into knobheads. You’ve got to remember that before Oasis Bonehead who was the eldest was a fucking plasterer. He knew how lucky he was, he woke up every morning and just went ‘Yesssss’ because he didn’t have to plaster walls anymore.

They just knew it was a gifted situation they were in and they were gonna grab it with both hands. It was just an amazing phenomenon to be involved with. There was a lot of boozing, a lot of cocaine knocking about and a lot of laughing. It was just a fucking piss up, just having a laugh, they were that open about it that there aren’t really any hidden stories, we took drugs, so fucking what Creating the Oasis logo… The first meeting I ever had with them as a band took place backstage at a gig at Sheffield uni, I believe they were supporting the BMX Bandits! Fucking hell, the BMX Bandits supported by Oasis. Any road, like I said I never normally referred to other sleeves when I was doing a sleeve because you run the risk of becoming derivative or doing pastiches which I’m not about. But on this occasion, because it was the first time I’d met them and wasn’t sure what they were about, I took a load of books with me of classic album covers and classic rock photography and they liked a lot of the early Stones albums like Out of Our Heads.

But more importantly they used to have the Decca logo on the front, and it hit me like a ton of bricks in the meeting that it would look ace with Oasis like that on it. Everyone knows it as the definitive Oasis logo and it started to go all downhill when they changed it. The Definitely Maybe cover… I don’t remember much about the conversation for Definitely Maybe, we decided it was going to be a band shot and did it at Bonehead’s house. I saw on some website recently that some idiot in some debate about Oasis’ artwork said ‘I hate that cover’ and my first thought was ‘nobhead’ because it’s ace, it’s like someone saying that they don’t like The Beatles, get a fucking grip mate. So I asked him why, and he said ‘it’s so aspirational.’ Which it isn’t, the inference was that these guys were shitkickers from Manchester and they all live in slums and they’ve had their picture taken in this posh flat. That was offensive in the extreme. The idea was that it wasn’t posed but it was, we spent weeks before the shoot with me sitting in every position and being photographed to build up a composition.

On getting The Verve to use Oasis as a support band in 1994… It was my idea, you can fucking print this, it was all down to me, this is rock and roll history. You’ve heard of the famous Oasis swirl cassette, there’s only ten in existence, the last one went for £2500 on ebay. Noel gave me one but I can’t find the cassette, but I suppose the box would be worth a fair bit. On that Verve tour I drove round in a Renault 5 playing the cassette to David Haliwell the Verve’s manager. And he said this is amazing, and I told Richard that he needed to have them supporting and I introduced them. That tour was something else, no separate dressing rooms, we all just mucked in. They played one in Edinburgh and the power went and the crowd was getting restless and Bonehead went out and played the spoons singing she’ll be coming round the mountain. It’s a sign of what was going on at the time, people say it was over-produced or whatever but it’s Be Here Now for fuck’s sake.

It’s bollocks, it’s Oasis’ last great album… The Rock And Roll Lifestyle… Do you know what, I say this a lot. There’s some things I can’t reveal and wouldn’t. There’s a cracking story about Noel at a fancy dress party at Ronnie Wood’s house, I can’t tell you the rest, not that Noel would give a shit but… fucking hell. We were all so normal and down to earth and what we got up to was no different than what you and your mates got up to. There was a lot of boozing, a lot of cocaine knocking about and a lot of laughing. It was just a fucking piss up, just having a laugh, they were that open about it that there aren’t really any hidden stories, we took drugs, so fucking what. Noel said it all when he said it was as normal as having a cup of tea because it was. We got pissed, got hammered and had a laugh. Nobody was raping virgins or slaughtering animals, it was just so exciting knowing that you were part of something that would be remembered forever. It’s a good job I didn’t know then what I do now it would’ve driven me round the bend.

We weren’t blasé about it though, we knew it was super super special and we were all very privileged to be there Putting a Rolls Royce in a swimming pool… The Be Here Now album, which incidentally a lot of people slag off including Noel, is a fucking great record. The original idea was to shoot the individual band members at any location in the world of their choice to make a composite image. Noel wanted to go to the mountain from Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, Guigs wanted to go to Jamaica but we changed our minds in the end, nothing to do with budget mind, we could’ve have done anything we wanted. Bonehead wanted to be shot next to a pool with a Rolls Royce in it to hark back to the Keith Moon story which never actually happened, so that was that and we set about finding a location that would let us put a car in their swimming pool. Despite what people think that wasn’t done digitally, that car is in that pool. It was scrapped with no engine and it cost us a grand.

And all the props around the pool have no meaning whatsoever, I just took Liam and Noel down to a BBC props warehouse in White City and they picked loads of random stuff, it was total nonsense. It’s a sign of what was going on at the time, people say it was over-produced or whatever but it’s Be Here Now for fuck’s sake. It’s bollocks, it’s Oasis’ last great album… On stopping working with Oasis… There was no fall out, I worked again on the 10 year anniversary of Definitely Maybe DVD. It was a crazy time, half the band had left, Guigs had gone, everyone’s head was up their arse, Noel and Liam were falling out and Noel wanted to go in a new direction. I didn’t have a god given right to do it, Robert Freeman did four or five Beatles albums and didn’t do the rest, that’s the way it goes. As it happens it was probably best I didn’t do the others. Oasis was the best time of my life and I’ll always look back on it with incredible fondness and it certainly didn’t do my career any harm. No hard feelings, no animosity, no fallout.

I preferred the intimacy of the small gigs but Maine Rd was ace, the second night in particular. I was e’d off my face in the top tier of The Kippax and nearly fell out On gigs, toothbrushes and and a grand in cash… I preferred the intimacy of the small gigs but Maine Rd was ace, the second night in particular. I was e’d off my face in the top tier of The Kippax and nearly fell out. Knebworth was too big, and Loch Lomond. The Cork gig was good but that is because of the crowd. It all blurs into one, not cos I was off my head all the time but there was so many gigs. I loved the start, when it was all just kicking off, there was a real buzz and we were like a secret little gang. The maddest gig of the lot I went to The Verve in Boston in 1997. I’d been watching The Prodigy at the Astoria and got hammered. I missed my alarm and had to get to Heathrow quciksticks.

These were the days when money was flowing, I was getting £20,000 a sleeve then and I didn’t have time to pack, but I was only going for two days. So I got dressed and got a taxi to Heathrow. I had a copy of Mr Nice on me, a toothbrush and £1000 is cash. I checked in and the bloke said where’s your luggage, I said ‘I haven’t got any’, so they searched me and found the cash, toothbrush and a book about drug smuggling. Then I get to America and you know what it’s like. They guy stops me. ‘Where’s your luggage?’ ‘haven’t got any’, ‘what you doing here?’ ‘I’ve come to see my mates, call the Verve to check it out.’ He just looked bemused. And he said ‘what you going to do for underwear,’ I said well I’ll fucking buy some. After the gig I got on the tour bus and was gonna go back to my hotel room and Richard says ‘I hear your going home and not coming with us,’ I told him I had to get back to London.

He said ‘I don’t believe you, let’s have a look at your plane ticket’. I should’ve seen it coming actually, he ripped it up. Two weeks later I’m in San Francisco, penniless and I’m carrying a new wardrobe round in a Nike holdall. What a trip. The state of Graphic Design… It’s so easy to market yourself as a graphic designer, there’s more of them than fucking hairdressers. It’s not impossible, I’ve got a killer track record so I can get work but its just the budgets, they’ve just fallen through the floor because everyone’s like ‘hang on, you want a grand for a logo? I can get someone to do that for £75… Looking to the future… I think it is essential that somebody like me has an online presence that is more than just static. I’m re-designing the Microdot website because that isn’t sufficient anymore so I’m going to change it. I’m going to add a blog and make it a lot more visual. Alan McGee is going to do an interview so is Nick McCabe. I want to go more down the video route, I’m an impatient fucker at the best of times.

I love video, I love films, I love editing and these days with the Canon DSLR, you can start knocking out broadcast quality films for a couple of grand. The YouTube generation rules now… when Definitely Maybe came out there was no website, we used promotional postcards with a freephone number, how mad is that? Only ten years ago Digital photography was in its infancy, think what it will be like in 5 years. It’s time for me to make that switch, the music industry is fucked, unless you’re Coldplay or Jay-Z you’re not making any money from sales, it’s from gigs. The grassroots has gone, but there’s more bands out there than ever and some fucking good ones as well. But the budgets are shrinking at the same rate as people's attention spans, they have so much choice. I’m looking at approaching clients, rather than spending X.Y,Z on advertising telling them do corporate films, good ones. I saw a film by a Russian guy who took a Canon lens to pieces and it was incredible. If stuff is creatively good people will watch it and hopefully pay for it. There’s no future in doing logo’s anymore, everyone can do it.

Finding work isn’t difficult, it’s finding work that inspires me, so I’ve just thought fuck it I’ll do it myself and make it work. I'm doing loads of self-motivated stuff, collages, painting and I really enjoy it. I had a copy of Mr Nice on me, a toothbrush and £1000 is cash. I checked in and the bloke said where’s your luggage, I said ‘I haven’t got any’, so they searched me and found the cash, toothbrush and a book about drug smuggling On teaching the next generation... I’m almost like cult to them and I love doing it. I litter my lecture with some anecdotes and they think I’m cool, it’s a piece of piss, but there is a serious point to it. These are the designers of the future and some of them will go on to great things. My message is clear, it doesn’t matter how good you are you have to research and prepare, even in the digital age, we didn’t produce killer work for a decade by chance, so that’s part of my gospel. On current bands... I’d love to work with the Arctic Monkeys.

They carry the torch, it goes all the way back to the Pistols, then The Smiths, then the Roses and Mondays, then Oasis and now it’s the Arctic Monkeys, I’d love to work with them, stick that in, they might get in touch.Apart from that, there’s a young band from Wigan called GlassHeads who I think are brilliant. Theres another band who I like called The Suzuki’s who are like a british Nirvana without being maudlin. And I thought Beyonce was ace at Glstonbury, what a fucking performance. But I can't be arsed with Coldplay, middle-class kids who try so hard to be cool, defacing pianos and guitars. Just fuck off. On Noel’s album Noel’s a genius songwriter and you don’t lose a talent like that. I haven’t heard any of the stuff but I hope it’s really, really, really good because if it is it will be ace and loads of people will get onto it. He’s an amazing person, top bloke to work for, genius songwriter and I’m expecting great things. But when you’ve got Definitely Maybe as a yardstick it’s difficult isn’t it?

Be Here Now (Oasis) Easter Egg - Cover Eggs Search for Easter Eggs Be Here Now (Oasis) Easter Egg - Cover Eggs On the front cover, the clock on the left is the same as the CD's front. Also, if you look at the bottom, at the arc in the ground made of stones (start with the stone in the arc closest to the bottom ) go up 5 stones and you can see a cigarette butt in the ground, probally from Liam, cuz he's the closest. The house in the background is Allen's house (drummer), if I remember right. Spread the word and Iconic Oasis and Britpop album covers to go on show at Liam Gallagher's Pretty Green store - Manchester Evening News What's On Iconic Oasis and Britpop album covers to go on show at Liam Gallagher's Pretty Green store Photographer Brian Cannon is exhibiting some of his most famous works at the Manchester shop after shooting the fashion label's latest collection Share Brian Cannon at his Oasis and Britpop exhibition at Pretty Green Share Get What's On updates directly to your inbox + Subscribe Thank you for subscribing!

Could not subscribe, try again laterInvalid Email He created some of Oasis’s most iconic record covers - and now an exhibition of renowned Britpop photographer Brian Cannon’s work is to go on show at Liam Gallagher ’s Pretty Green store in Manchester. The shot that graced the band ’s debut album Definitely Maybe as well as images from smash-hit singles including Wonderwall, Some Might Say and Roll With It will feature alongside never-before-seen out-takes from some of his most famous shoots in the show, which opens this Friday. Brian, who has also worked with the likes of The Verve, Super Furry Animals, Suede, Cast and Ash, could never have predicted just how famous his work would become as he shot the Definitely Maybe cover at guitarist Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs’ house in Didsbury in 1994. But he says he knew even then that the band were destined for greatness - and they did too. “Nobody knew who they were back then but I think they genuinely did believe that they were something else, that they would be stratospherically big,” he said. “Quality doesn’t always guarantee success but they were just brilliant. They really were something else.

I just felt it and I thought it would be a travesty if they didn’t make it big.” The Definitely Maybe album cover (Photo: Big Brother Recordings Ltd) Behind the self-assurance, rock and roll antics and well-documented feuds, Brian says the band were always ‘total professionals’ when he worked with them. “Don’t believe everything you read about them,” he said. “They were very enthusiastic and totally into it - not just the music but the artwork itself as well. “I would have creative meetings with Noel, I’d give him some pointers and he’d come back with some ideas. “I got him and he got me. Nothing ever got rejected or reshot.” One of the most memorable shoots was for their third album Be Here Now, when they sank a Rolls Royce in a swimming pool. “It was scary actually, we knew we only got one go at it and none of us had ever done anything like that before,” he said. “It was a bizarre sight, this Rolls Royce creaking precariously on all this scaffolding and then we had to fill the pool back up.

“I remember thinking: ‘If this topples we’re all knackered.’ Looking back at it now, health and safety would have shut us down in a heartbeat. “It took us two days to get that car in that pool and I made sure I disappeared by the time it came to getting it back out. I’d had enough.” Images from Brian Cannon's exhibition at Pretty Green (Photo: Matt Goff) But it is the cover of 1995 single Some Might Say, the first to be taken from second album (What's The Story) Morning Glory?, that remains Brian’s favourite. “It was their first number one and my mum and dad are on the front,” he said. “That’s my dad, pushing that wheelbarrow.” Alongside the photos and album covers, the exhibition will also feature other memorabilia from the era, including an early prototype of the Oasis logo, which Brian’s graphic design company Microdot created, and handwritten letters from The Verve frontman Richard Ashcroft. The show comes after he was recruited to shoot Pretty Green’s autumn/winter collection, which is inspired by the Northern Soul movement that emerged in Britain in the late 1960s.

Brian, who was born and raised in its Wigan heartland and has been photographing the still-thriving scene for the past three years, said: “Funnily enough, it had nothing to do with [my Oasis connection]. “Somebody from Pretty Green had seen my Northern Soul photography and contacted me to see if I would come and do the shoot. “They didn’t actually realise I’d worked with Liam in the past.” The collection incorporates woven badges in the style of sew-on patches created in the 60s by clubs like Wigan Casino and Manchester's Twisted Wheel, along with geometric prints inspired by those worn by black soul and Motown artists at the time. The photoshoot also captures the spirit of the scene, with the models pictured throwing its distinctive dance shapes. Images from Brian Cannon's photoshoot for Pretty Green “I knew a couple of lads from the scene who would fit the bill so I chose the models,” said Brian. “I think they’ve done a great job [with the collection]. It’s quite subtle, what they’ve done, as opposed to using the obvious symbols and motifs.

“I was too young to go to Wigan Casino - I was only 15 when it shut - but I’ve been into Northern Soul since the 80s. “There’s no other scene quite like it in the world. It’s a totally retro scene, there’s no new music being made, yet there’s a whole new young element to it. “Loads of kids are getting involved because their parents have passed on their record collections. There’s a massive resurgence now.” The exhibition launches at the Pretty Green store in King Street on Friday and runs until the end of October. Like us on Facebook Oasis Album Cover a Story in Itself Oasis Album Cover a Story in Itself This article was taken from the August 18, 1997 edition of the Republican-American which is based in Waterbury, Connecticut, USA. The sleeve of Bob Dylan�s 1967 "John Wesley Harding" has an intriguing subtext. It is a very small subtext indeed, so if you want to find it, forget about the CD and get a copy of the LP. Look at the front cover. Grinning Dylan stands in the woods with two native American men and some dour old geezer. Can�t see it, can you?

Turn the sleeve upside down and look at the tree trunk behind Bob�s head very, very closely. Perhaps with a microscope, or at least a magnifying glass. There you will see the heads of The Beatles and The Band hanging from the trees. There�s Ringo�s moustache, look! Robbie Robertson�s face, too! As Dylan wrote in his "Ballad Of A Thin Man": "You know something is happening but you don�t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?" You�re darn tootin� I don�t. It is hard to judge whether images of these old rockers are, in fact, there or whether you can see them thanks only to the power of suggestion. Even when magnified, the details are so grainy that the marks could equally be gnarls on the trunk. Like Leonardo�s pupils, we are being exhorted, perhaps, to find faces in the clouds and figures in a broken plaster. Yes. But what would it mean if the Beatles were in the trees? Did Dylan want to hand the Fab Four and his erstwhile colleagues?

Or is it a proto-post-moderist critique of the symbol-laden era of album sleeves ushered in by the Beatles� heavily designed concept sleeves, not least the Sgt. Pepper album? Do the people who come up with these theories have too much time on their hands or what? The new Oasis album, "Be Here Now", takes us back to the time when people studied album sleeves with magnifying glasses. It�s an enigma wrapped in a riddle wrapped in cellophane and available from a record shop near you on Aug. 21. The cover shows the scene outside Stocks Hotel at Aldbury, near Tring, southern England. A Rolls-Royce floats in a swimming pool. The scene bespeaks the era of rock �n� roll excess � very Keith Moon and yet also very John Lennon (he owns a car very like that in the �60s). Liam Gallagher stands behind a Vespa scooter. Noel Gallagher stands a t the back of the shot, looking through a telescope at an egg-shaped globe in an egg-cup.

Another member of the band looks at a tacky white �60s-style TV � uncannily like the one that pumped out baked beans over Oliver Reed in the film of "Tommy." There�s more putative symbolism here than in your average Dali painting. The main difference from such art (apart from its thorough-going lack of profundity) is that it is very ugly � but even that is understandable. After all, what the sleeve is trying to evoke is the clumsy photomontages of yesteryear, to prompt millions of teenage fans to return to their bedrooms musing about the significance of the gramophone in the sleeve�s bottom right corner. Already the sleeve has prompted more semiotic speculation on the Internet than a Roland Barthes conference. Many see it entirely as a Beatles homage (Oasis� career could be interpreted wholly as this.) Noel and the telescope? There�s a scene in the "Magical Mystery Tour" film in which Ringo looks through a telescope. The phone box?

Clearly a reference to the box the Fab Four pile into to avaoid fans in "A Hard Day�s Night." There�s a station clock in the picture, too, just like the one in "A Hard Day�s Night." (The clock has no hands � which must have something to do with the Gallaghers� pretensions to timeless appeal.) Too circumstantial? Try this. The Rolls� registration plate is SYO 724F, the same as the police van parked on the sleeve of the Beatles� Abbey Road. Oasis “Be Here Now” Alternate Album Cover Release Dates | FeelNumb.com Oasis “Be Here Now” Alternate Album Cover Release Dates By raul on December 2, 2009 in Oasis “Be Here Now” the third studio album by Oasis was released in August 1997. The release date in each region was commemorated on the calendar pictured on the cover sleeve and on the back cover of the CD booklet. By dating the album they felt it would encourage fans to believe that buying a copy on the day it appeared was to participate in some kind of historical event. The first release date was the was Thursday, August 21, 1997.

The second release date was Tuesday, August 26, 1997. The cover image was shot in April 1997 at Stocks House in Hertfordshire, the former home of Victor Lownes, the head of the Playboy Clubs in the UK until 1988. It features Oasis standing outside the hotel surrounded by assorted props. At the center of the image is a Rolls Royce floating in a swimming pool that pays hidden homage to The Beatles. Click the photo or link below to find out how… Oasis – The Stories Behind Their Cryptic Album And Single Sleeve Art - NME NME 1:23 pm - Aug 18, 2015 0shares 0shares What’s the first thing you think of when you think of Oasis? No, apart from drugs and fighting. No, not Knebworth or Britpop or massive ’90s anthems or slagging off other acts or whatever else you’re thinking. Yes, that’s right, classic record sleeves.

Oasis covers, often designed by Brian Cannon’s Microdot, were amongst the most striking of the past 20 years, full of clues, red herrings and tributes to a certain Liverpudlian band of yore – and always with a colourful story attached. Here’s 15 of the best. 1/15 Definitely Maybe Inspired by the sleeve of ‘A Collection Of Beatles Oldies’, the band were shot in Bonehead’s front room surrounded by significant objects: pictures of Burt Bacharach and Rodney Marsh, a spinning globe and glasses filled with Ribena. The idea of Liam ‘lying in state’ came from photographer Michael Spencer Jones visiting the Egyptology section of the Manchester Science Museum. Credit: Press 2/15 (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? Shot at dawn on Berwick Street in Soho, then home to London’s coolest record shops, the snap of DJ Sean Rowley and Oasis designer Brian Cannon walking past each other (producer Owen Morris holds the album’s master tapes in the background) was deliberately ambiguous. “We don’t know if the characters… are good or bad, friendly or hostile,” said Spencer Jones.

Credit: Press 3/15 Be Here Now The shoot at the former home of a Playboy club chief was a boozy affair that, according to Spencer Jones, turned into “Alice In Wonderland meets Apocalypse Now”. The ‘clues’, featuring a calendar showing the release date, a moped, a clock with no hands and a Rolls Royce in a swimming pool (Bonehead’s suggestion) were mostly chosen at random from a BBC props store. Credit: Press 4/15 Dig Out Your Soul This explosion of imagery – waterfalls, charging cavalry, a bitten apple (because The Beatles?) – centred on a musical atomic blast you could hold in your hands, looked like it was created by a scissor-adept toddler in a fit. It was actually the work of Julian House, who’d designed Primal Scream’s ‘XTRMNTR’. Noel called him “the most expensive graphic designer in London”.

5/15 Some Might Say “Noel gave me a sheet of the lyrics,” said Brian Cannon, “he wanted an image that depicted them all!” So, at Cromford Station near Matlock, he gathered a sink full of fish, a woman with “dishes on the brain” (actually a barmaid Brian fancied) and a tramp “in need of education”. Spencer Jones shot the sleeve in black and white then spent a week painting it for a surreal effect. Credit: Press 6/15 Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants We guess the days tended to blur into one at the peak of Oasis’ hedonism and success, hence this image of the New York skyline gradually melting from day to night. The shot, the sort of thing you might see from a giant’s shoulder, was created by photographing the same frame every half an hour for 18 hours, then digitally merging them. 7/15 Stop The Clocks Beatles much? The band hired Sir Peter Blake, of ‘Sgt. Pepper’s…’ sleeve fame, to create the cover image for their 2006 compilation album.

In fine ‘Be Here Now’ fashion Blake randomly collected objects including Dorothy from The Wizard Of Oz, Snow White’s seven dwarves and a freaky clown doll. “It’s using the mystery of ‘Definitely Maybe’ and running away with it,” Blake said. 8/15 Supersonic The ultimate Oasis ‘action shot’ for their debut single was taken during the recording sessions for ‘Definitely Maybe’ in Monnow Valley studios in Wales. Spencer Jones, shooting them from the very beginning, decided to put the tungsten lights in the frame “to put Oasis firmly in the spotlight for their debut single”. 9/15 Cigarettes & Alcohol Fresh from a ‘refreshing’ Swedish trip which saw them escorted to the airport by police, Oasis hit the Halcyon Hotel in London to recreate a rock’n’roll party scene for the ‘Cigarettes & Alcohol’ sleeve. Noel played acoustic sets, they ran up a four-figure room service bill, guests complained like crazy and Creation’s Tim Abbot, centre, clearly had the time of his life.

10/15 Roll With It The day before Glastonbury ’95, Oasis hit a sweltering Weston-super-Mare to watch tvs on the beach, much to the amusement of the locals, who found them somewhat overdressed for the weather. “It was absolutely red hot and the band were sat in duffle coats,” said Cannon, “much to the interest of hundreds of onlookers out of shot.” Credit: Press 11/15 Wonderwall Brian Cannon: “Shot on Primrose Hill in north-west London, this features ex-Creation Records employee Anita Heryet. The image is directly influenced by the work of Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte. It’s my hand holding the picture frame, and we took so long getting it right I had to put a stool under my elbow to hold my arm up.” 12/15 Don’t Look Back In Anger It might look like they’ve gone postal in Interflora, but this was another Beatles tribute, as Cannon explained. “This was based on the story of Ringo Starr leaving The Beatles and returning to recording sessions to see his drum kit smothered in flowers.

We had 10,000 carnations imported from Holland for the shoot then dyed 3,000 of them blue by dipping them in ink.” 13/15 D’You Know What I Mean? Shrouded in secrecy to prevent a riot, in 1997 Oasis turned up to shoot the sleeve for ‘D’You Know What I Mean?’ on the Blind Steps in an alleyway in Wigan near a boxing club. The image of a crowd gawping upwards was intended to reflect the shifting political scene as Labour were about to sweep to power for the first time in almost two decades. Credit: Press 14/15 Don’t Go Away Oasis sleeve bingo! Not only is there a plane mentioned in the lyrics to ‘Don’t Go Away’, but this is also the Liverpool airport where The Beatles were greeted by screaming fans at the peak of Beatlemania. All it needs is Brian Cannon, in a duffel coat, to be flying it pissed and this would be the most Oasis sleeve ever… Credit: Press 15/15 Live Forever Just a house? Come now, have you learnt nothing this far?

The house on the ‘Live Forever’ sleeve is actually the childhood home of John Lennon, which Spencer Jones had photographed several years earlier and which he thought had “an ethereal and mysterious quality”. Gallagher sleeve catnip.

Question: Which Oasis album cover shows a Rolls Royce in a swimming pool
Answer: Be Here Now